gordianplotfandomcom-20200214-history
Restrictions of Formal Art
1) Motion.—We have just seen how any merely imitative art is restricted from the representation of motion. The last example sufficiently illustrates the limitation. (2) Time.—Painting or Sculpture can scarcely tell a story involving a succession of incidents, except as they hint the narrative to such minds as are given to reflection on the relations of cause and effect. Mr. Ruskin has given a description of one of Tintoret's paintings, in which the power of the artist's invention is displayed by the ingenious triumph over the most formidable obstacles of his art : "In the center of the gallery at Parma, there is a canvas of Tintoret's whose sublimity of conception and grandeur of color are seen in the highest perfection, by their opposition to the morbid and vulgar sentimentalism of Correggio. It is an En¬tombment of Christ, with a landscape distance. . . . An ordinary or unimaginative painter would have made prominent, among his objects of landscape, such as might naturally be sup¬posed to have been visible from the sepulcher, and shown with the crosses of Calvary some portion of Jerusalem, or of the Val¬ley of Jehoshaphat. But Tintoret has a far higher aim. Dwell¬ing on the peculiar force of the event before him, as the fulfill¬ment 01 the final prophecy respecting the passion, He made his grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death,' he desires to direct the mind of the spectator to this receiving of the body of Christ, in its contrast with the houseless birth and the desert life. And, therefore, behind the ghastly tomb-grass that shakes Ite black and withered blades above the rocks of the sepulcher, there is seen, not the actual material distance of the spot itself, (though the crosses are shown faintly) but that to which the thoughtful spirit would return in vision, a desert place, where the foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, and against the barred twilight of the melancholy sky are seen the moldering beams and shattered roofing of a ruined cattle-shed —.he canopy of the nativity."* This is exquisite, but altogether too subtile for gen¬eral apprehension. Features of this kind are generally overlooked, because the appreciation of them depends on an acuteness of perception not universally possessed. It may be held, therefore, that painting has no power of its own 0 express ideas of time. It here meets a limitation which is no barrier to diction. The painter must seize his subject at the one favorable moment ; and here is another limitation, since all moments are not equally favorable. (3) Power.—Power, the cause of motion, may be suggested in painting, but it is with difficulty that un¬usual power can be expressed. Homer, speaking of Minerva's attack upon Mars, says : "But she, retiring, with strong grasp upheaved A rugged stone, black, ponderous from the plain, A landmark fixed by men of ancient times." Leasing, commenting on this passage, expresses his views thus : "In order properly to estimate the greatness of this stone, we must remember that Homer makes his heroes for the nonce as strong as the strongest man in his say; but he makes those men whom Nestor knew in his youth surpass them in strength. Now, I ask, with respect to this stone, which not one man out of the men of Nestor's youthful contemporaries could have put down for a boundary stone,—now, I ask, if Minerva had thrown such a stone at Mars, of what stature must the goddess be ? If her stature is to be proportioned to the greatness of the stone, then the wonder ceases. A. man who is three times larger than I am must naturally be able to throw a stone three times greater. But if the stature of the goddess be not proportioned to the greatness of the stone, then there arises an evident improbability in the painting, the repulsiveness of which is not removed by the cold reflection that a goddess must have superhuman strength. Where I see an effect greater than usual, I expect to find an instrument greater than usual. And Mars overthrown by this mighty stone, covered ten acres.; It is impossible that the painter could give this extraordinary size to the god, but if he does not give it him, then Mars does not lie upon the ground, like the Homeric Mars, but like a common war¬rior." * (a) Penetrative Imagination.—A consideration of great importance to the relative value of the various modes of expression is, that the best results of the penetrative imagination, the power which reaches to the essential constitution of things, cannot be ex¬pressed by any formal art. The genius of Tintoret again vindicates the wondrous powers of painting, but we must be content with a reference to Ruskin's de¬scription of his "Massacre of the Innocents." * Laocoon. Sir Robert Phillimore's Translation. fRuskin's Modern Painters, vol.l. The limit of formal art will be seen by a study of the following description of "Death." "As silent and dark as a shadow, unmoved as a stone That standeth all day in the desert, unseen and alone, Waiteth Death : no breeze touches her mantle that falieth right down, Over feet that we see not and hands that we see not ; a frown Seems to drift down the distance and blight the fresh pastures of life, And an icy breath seems to flow from her and make the air rife With tremblings." "Over feet that we see not and hands that we see not ! " What combination of line and color can pre¬sent this subtile image ? If unseen, surely not to be expressed in line and color. The painter and sculptor drape those unseen hands and feet, but then how shall they be expressed ? How shall any formal art express the idea of the "air rife with the tremblings of her icy breath ?" Another forcible illustration of the inability of painting to represent the results of the penetrative imagination is found in the mist with which Homer envelops his heroes when he makes them invisible to mortals. Painting has sometimes attempted to repre¬sent this invisibility by placing a thin cloud between the hero and those from whom he is supposed to be concealed. Lessing has pointed out the absurdity of introducing this cloud into painting.